“Waiting for you,” I replied, sliding my hand over her hip.
She tried to step out of my arms but there was no way I was going to let that happen. “I said I’d call.”
“And I said I’d wait.”
“I was just . . . We’d just . . . I was about to call you,” she said, her hand sliding over my chest. I shuddered at the perfect feel of her.
“What were you going to say?”
Her smile faltered. “I was going to say I’ll hear you out.”
“Like I should have done to you,” I mumbled. She was a better human being than me. I’d questioned her, accused her and here she was, still offering me a chance to set things straight. “I understand I betrayed you. You have every reason to hate me.”
“I don’t hate you. But I also know that you can’t possibly feel for me what I feel for you. Because if you did, we wouldn’t be standing here heading in different directions. And I can’t be with someone I love more than they love me. My heart is fragile enough. It can’t cope with the inevitable disappointment that comes from that.”
I groaned, desperate to take on all the pain I’d caused her, all the pain she felt inside. “I was an idiot. I accept that, but let me prove to you that I have learned my lesson. I should never have questioned you. But don’t ever think it was because I didn’t love you enough. I stand here, not just believing but knowing that I will love you until my last breath. That’s true whether you walk away from me or you let me keep proving my love to you for the rest of our lives.”
She covered her face with her hands in the same way I’d seen her do through binoculars all those weeks before. “I’m here for the next five months, Hayden. We don’t work together.”
“Look at me,” I said, circling my hands around her wrists and uncovering her face. I swiped my thumbs below her eyes, hating that I’d caused her grief. “Five months is nothing.” I pulled out her hair tie, letting her chestnut-brown locks fall free, the ends caught by the falling sun. There she was. My Avery. “It’s all details. We’ll figure it out.”
She swept her fingers over my cheekbone, shaking her head. “They’re important details and I can’t open myself up again. Not to you. Not when I don’t know how it’s going to end.”
“I’ll tell you how it’s going to end. You’re going to marry me, we’re going to have twenty kids and we’re going to grow old together.” Fuck, I’d never thought a wife would be in my future, let alone kids, but being with Avery, that was all I could see. Her. Forever.
She rolled her eyes. “I need you to be serious. If we can’t make dating work then what hope do we have?”
“We’re way beyond dating, my love. Don’t you get it? You need to understand that when we met there was no going back. I belong to you now. You belong to me. Tell me it’s not true.”
“I can’t. I love you.”
My heart swooped. She was mine. “I love you more than you will ever know.”
I took her hand and strode down the dock. “But if you want to nail down the details, plan it all out? Let’s go.”
“Where are we going? Not to your hotel because—”
“What? You won’t be able to keep your greedy little hands off me?”
She laughed and part of me died that I’d had to wait so long to hear that again.
“No, we’re going to my car. I have my laptop. We’re going to make a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Yeah, I’m going to figure out how much time I can spend over here. Maybe I’ll get an office or something.”
“In Miami? You’re just going to move to the States, just like that?”
I stopped suddenly and faced her. “You don’t get it, do you? I want you. And I’m going to do whatever it takes, and that means doing whatever you need.”
“I think this might be my last season anyway,” she said. “My brother’s insurers were a pain in my ass but we have a charity that’s pledged to step in—” She stopped talking and looked at me, her eyes narrowing. “You found out the insurers had reassessed my brother’s benefits,” she said. “It was you! Lycan. Wolf. Shit, Hayden.” She stamped her foot on the ground but didn’t try to drop my hand.
It was time for my final confession. I’d hoped to tell her once she’d agreed to be mine. I didn’t want money or any weird sense of obligation to color her decision. “The Lycan Foundation is my charity. They’ve agreed to fund your brother’s care. It really was the least I could do. I was the reason it was cut in the first place.”